While the US has engaged Online PR much more rapidly than many other countries, it is interesting to see some early activity in Online PR in Australia.
As far as we can see the Australian Online PR industry is evolving in several ways
Traditional PR agencies are adding digital media to their services ( with little understanding of the depth and technical aspects required by Online PR)
Boutique Technology PR agencies sprouting up - who are reasonably solid and do embrace social media or SMO (but don't cover SEO)
Web and SEO agencies rebadging their work as Online PR (without the holistic approach required)
There is much discussion about PR 2.0 amongst US blogs, yet most Aussie blogs seems to dance around the subject.
The reality is, PR has changed. PR is all about influencing the influencers. But as we have seen, the scope of influences have changed. No longer do TV, Newspapers and Radio hold the greatest influence over toady's consumers. A recent stat we came across mentioned that 65% of all Australian consumer purchases greater than $200AUD were researched online (ABN 2007).
When researching online, bloggers and social recommendation often hold significantly more influence than spun up Press Releases on any of the major news outlets.
So how do we deliver real value Online PR in Australia?
Well, if PR is about influencing the influencers, then Online PR is about influencing Online Influences, weather the influences are search engines results, bloggers, consumer review sites, forums, social media and community networks such as Facebook and MySpace.
Target these Influencers and evaluate who can be contacted (you may require some technical research methods to find out exactly how to contact these people)
Engage in relevant, honest, authentic, spin-free conversations with these Influencers
Be prepared to take negative feedback, and to openly and honestly address the critisism.
Offer influencers something of real value.
At the end of the day, Online PR is different to Traditional PR. Online PR is a 2 way conversation, Traditional PR is a 1 way broadcast.
-- Shifted Pixels provides Online PR Services and Consulting to Sydney and Australian based businesses, and we also offer white label consulting services to Traditional PR and Marketing agencies who may be looking to get ahead in this rapidly emerging space.
Call us for a quick chat with one of our friendly staff.
Interesting news from the ACCC who say that Consumers consider blogs as reliable and as influential as mainstream media.
Sounds like call to action for online reputation monitoring :P Its also interesting to consider how the ACCC see's its role in new media. Will they try to control and censor australian bloggers and online review sites.
"CONSUMERS who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today.
"For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources.""
"For regulators like the ACCC, it means ensuring regulation relied on during the last century does not become an irrelevant fallback position that fails to serve the public's best interests," he said".
This is very cool but also scary, what has made the internet great is its total freedom. Will that be eroded by Australian governments and what can we do to ensure that bloggers cannot be held legally liable if they critisise an Australian Company online.
The Web is a Big Place. People are talking about you online and they arn't censored in what they say. They can slander you in a second, and it you dont catch it in time: your bad press will end up in traditional media.
So how do you manage and monitor your online reputation?
First of all. Who is interested in Online Reputation Management.
New economy consumers are different. Selling traditional mass market products in the new economy doesn't work.
We are almost back to in the pre-industrial era of the fundamentally open market place, where buyers and sellers are 100% equal.
I think is is a broader change, markets are efficient and business as usual has changed. It will be increasingly more difficult to sell rubbish products and add some fancy marketing and become successful.
Social media, bloggers and online community's will see through the lies and talk about it. This will lead to negative online conversations.
Negative conversation about your company/brand/service WILL impact your search engine reputation, which consumers DO read
The frightening part is what people say about online can never be erased, and can be searched for all time! With services like Google and Archive.org, your bad press online can never be erased!
If what your selling isn't authentic, honest, real and of measurable value... start selling something that is, or it will damage you in the future. If you wouldn't buy it yourself, don't expect your customers too.
The Trend Spotters, the Cool Hunters, The Social Media Influencer's, Bloggers and Media Critics that influence what consumers think online.
We met Gen C on our blog in July 2007, but only just recently (thanks to Nick Hodge at Microsoft) have we put a name to this elite breed of new thinkers.
"In the golden age of branding, several guests at the party held sway: brand, PR, marketing, external relations (ER), research, and the agencies. On top of that, we had a few occasional attendees, such as consumer affairs, investor relations, and community relations.
Today, in the golden age of consumer empowerment, we have the same party guests, but their sway is being challenged in a very big way by an aggressive, sometimes rude and abrupt new guest at the party: the consumer influencer.
They may have accrued influence over time or have situational influence (e.g., they were first to try and review the iPhone, hence setting off a broader chain reaction). That influence often spills from the online zone into the offline or vice versa. Indeed, today's uber-influencers are largely platform agnostic, except they tend to have a more quantifiable digital trail of results online. Put another way, if you search their names, you'll find evidence of something they said."
One of the most interesting aspects of Gen-C, is they can't be bought, reached by PR agencies or brought over to traditional media's point of view.
They are often highly informed, highly critical, strongly opionated. They have little regard for trashing your reputation to millions of online readers if they percieve you to have wronged them in anyways.
So how do we manage and monitoring these what Gen-C says about your brand? We have been using BuzzNumbers recently to manage and monitor what Gen-C is saying about our clients. What have you been using?
What do you think of this Gen-C hype? (Gen-C Wikipedia) Leave a comment.
This kind of Editorial/Advertising clash would be difficult to find in traditional media, however with computer assisted banner ad placements we might see more and more of this online.
On one hand it may make sense for telstra to advertise here, maybe to try and overcome negative sentiment from the editorial. On the other hand telstra might be upset by this computer generated irony, and may request their adverting dollars back from SMH.
Interesting article on Radiohead's latest distribution experiment - "Pay What You want" downloads. They canned their label company, recorded it indie and distributed via the internet, charging only what consumers wanted to pay. Including "zero".
Source in article says that 1.2 million copies were download so far. Previous release scored 300,000 cd sales globally within the same amount of time.
Interesting to see how much money that sent directly to the band, with distro and royalty fees being basically zero... Nine Inch Nails are doing this with their next album too... Proof that the media and entertainment world is changing.
Just stumbled across a great Aussie startup MyInvites.com.au.
Its a wonderful little tool for taking care of events, invitations and RSVP lists.
MyInvites generates some pretty sweet looking invitations, and also tracks and manages all your RSVP's.
If you do corporate events for a living this is a must for your toolbox, and if your having a party or organizing a reunion or farewell party, MyInvites is bloody brilliant!
NY startup Mixaloo wants to make the experience of purchasing music online more social and rewarding, both emotionally and financially.
The company is taking a phenomenon - the mixtape - that has spanned several decades and media formats - 8 tracks, audio cassettes, CDs, and MP3 players - and bringing it to the web.
As a Mixaloo user, you can create playlists of music from all the major record labels, including Warner, Universal, EMI, and Sony. You can then share these playlists with friends via email, or you can embed playlist widgets into your website, blog, personalized homepage, or social networking profile. Mixaloo widgets can be added to your various online properties
To make a mix is free, but your friends will need to pay for the whole mix if they want to hear more than 30-second preview clips. The songs are 99 cents each
What does it take to turn ideas into success? What are the elements of a perfect startup? How do you win the war for customers? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any web startup, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.
Ive been watching a wonderful docu-drama video series called 2057: The world in 50 Years
What would you see and experience if the clocks rolled forward 50 years? In a unique blend of drama and science, this three-part series shows you the world of tomorrow. Will we have flying cars? Will advances in medicine help us stay young forever? What about "printing" custom-made vital organs? What will our cities look like? What will tomorrow's wars be about? Will we have robots helping around the house? Will solar power be the new oil?
"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there." - Charles Kettering
If you have a chance, check out this great Discovery Channel video documentary
You are in great danger! - Now give us your money to protect you......
Our government is extorting us using Fear.
It's blatant Terrorism - and most western Governments are doing it to their own people.
Billions is being spend of OUR tax money globally; WASTED on terrorism prevention, drug enforcement, security/enforcement related policies (let alone the reduction of personal liberties and culutral freedom
The greatest irony of this situation is that illegal drug money fuels Terrorism/Crime.
Imagine If...
We Cut 80% of terrorism/security spending, use the money saved to feed, cloth and shelter the poor of the world and build some global goodwill with our resources
Legalise and govenment manage all currently illegal drugs (license them like alcohol and tobacco).
Lets use the Billions of dollars generated from this and taken from terrorism/crime and use this money to pay for health,education, support, rehabilitation and care for the people of the world.
What do you think?
On a side note, We need to cut this nonsense Anti-Drug and Anti-Terrorism Media/Advertising spending. Our Government is spending HUNDREDS OF MILLION dollars of OUR TAX MONEY Terrorising us and telling lies to our kids. The Noise outweighs the Signal.
Regardless of your moral position: The risks from drugs/terrorism are statistically so small they are insignificant. There is more chance of being eaten by a bus or crashing your car on holidays (or making millions in a late dot com startup)
Do you care? Voice up and tell your friends why this is important...
When i first read this headline in my aggregator, i almost freaked! Has everyone gone mad? Are we back to bubble economics? Didnt we learn anything from 1999-2001?
Then i realised they were talking Free as in Markets (not free as in beer). IE. Let the consumer decide the price.
Its great to see great bands (like radiohead) realising the power of the marketplace and the value of a great product. They know that if you make something great that people actually want, then people will pay for it.
This factors hurts the Record Labels in exactly the same way: if you have a shite product (like britany spears or jessica simpson), then no one will be prepared to pay to consume it (so we use free Internet downloads). Suing your consumers for this makes the problem even worse, it makes people want to consume this even less, free or otherwise
One might consider that an interesting conflict/opportunity might arise from this situation. In a world of zero-scarcity (or almost unlimited content) and with a growth in scarcity of human attention (the attention economy), content may end up becoming virtually free (supply/demand).
Quite clearly we might have more Content out there than Attention to consume it. It is even conceivable that soon enough we might even be paid to consume content, an interesting notion.
1. Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan - 33,200,000 2. New York, United States - 17,800,000 3. Sao Paulo, Brazil - 17,700,000 4. Seoul-Incheon, South Korea - 17,500,000 5. Mexico City, Mexico - 17,400,000 6. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan - 16,425,000 7. Manila, Philippines - 14,750,000 8.Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay) - 14,350,000 9. Jakarta, Indonesia - 14,250,000 10. Lagos, Nigeria - 13,400,000 11. Kolkata, India (formerly Calcutta) - 12,700,000 12. Delhi, India - 12,300,000 13. Cairo, Egypt - 12,200,000 14. Los Angeles, United States - 11,789,000 15. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 11,200,000 16. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 10,800,000 17. Moscow, Russia - 10,500,000 18. Shanghai, China - 10,000,000 19. Karachi, Pakistan - 9,800,000 20. Paris, France - 9,645,000 21. Nagoya, Japan - 9,000,000 (tie) 21. Istanbul, Turkey - 9,000,000 (tie) 23. Beijing, China - 8,614,000 24. Chicago, United States - 8,308,000 25. London, United Kingdom - 8,278,000 26. Shenzhen, China - 8,000,000
I bumped into this quote today that i hadnt seen since around 99, its a good one:
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."
Wikipedia Says:
"Information wants to be free" is an expression that has come to be the unofficial motto of the free content movement. The expression is first recorded as pronounced by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984"
Cool. I'm guessing this is a quote traditional content/media/publishing companies really dont want to hear....
Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.
However, employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Mostly, they need to get out of the way so intranetworked employees can converse directly with internetworked markets.
Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in....
Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. Its that way in most new business too.
The earliest phase is usually the most productive.
The striking thing about this phase is that its often completely different from what people think "business" looks like. When you think business you think suits, offices, boardrooms, reports. However most successful businesses are the opposite of this, and whats more they are probably the most productive part of the whole economy.
Why the disconnect? I think there's a principle at work here: the less energy people spend on performance, the more they spend on appearance to compensate.
Whats worse is that the energy people spend on seeming impressive, actually makes their performance worse!
Suits, for example, don't help people think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and are making coffee in a bathrobe (or in the shower or reading a bedtime story to their kids). That's when you have really big ideas! Just imagine what a company would be like if people could think that well at work all the time.
I don't have a proposal for how to achieve this in the real world, but it did seem interesting to pry this topic open.
Sometimes i think professionalism is a dieing fad from the 1970's. Today we want authentic, genuine products, partners, clients, suppliers and friends. Real people who do real work. No longer does the bland, fake "take a number and get in line" sterility of professionalism cut it for the informed, seasoned, advertising-hardened consumer.
What do you think, leave a comment on the blog...
Disclaimer: Thanks to Jessica Livingstone and Paul Graham for Inspiration
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